Sunday, January 05, 2014

Mission Control

The first visit to the gym went great. The treadmill .. Wow. It's not a workout, it's mission control. Built-in fans and cupholders, constant readout of your heart rate, a chart telling me the sweet spot (target heart rate) to focus on. How appropriate - for a mission that's never really accomplished.

Easy to see how people get into this and overdo it. There's a lot to try and it's not all torture. I wanted to be sure and leave still able to walk and have a desire to come back. So on that, FIRST DOWN!

Thursday, January 02, 2014

Football and Fitness

Happy new year.  We all have our resolutions, I suppose. Published or not, there's a cleansing feeling in seeing a blank January. We can try again. We can turn a page. It's more than a new month. It's a new beginning.

I've been watching a LOT of football and you have to admire one genius thing about the game. You go on the field knowing you need to score, but the game is structured to break that big goal into smaller ones. First downs. Take four plays. Get at least ten yards and you can keep the ball. Move the chains. Smart.

I think it's the often welcome disruption of routine that the holidays deliver unto us. By January, we are yearning for the daily grind to come back - resetting the calendar resets the alarm, the promised diet and exercise commitment. I usually go through that "miscellaneous" pile on my desk and discover something I started looking for during the previous Easter weekend.

This year, it's time to deploy stage two of the getting into shape plan. The first stage was fixing a lifetime of bad news in the knees department and boy oh boy did THAT turn out to be more complicated than planned. Bilateral knee replacement (2 knees on same day) is never going to be a picnic but my experience added some ugly setbacks including a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis during my recovery - cause, yeah, I relish challenge.

Ok fine. I have this. I'm living with it. I've beaten it into remission now, so ... What's next?

One thing is, this year must feature regular visits to a gym to work on machines. I told myself I'd get enough physical activity without doing this. I was wrong. Way wrong. So new year, new opportunities. Off to the gym we go, hubby and I.

It sounds like way more fun than cleaning the house. Unfortunately, gotta do that too. But we're joining and doing this stuff together.

First down, ten yards to go.